I'm a retired teacher and school administrator and I've written poetry, seriously and less than seriously, since I was a teenager. It's only recently that I've taken seriously the idea of sharing my poems beyond these four walls—where they're met with great acclaim by my wife and sometimes by my daughter—and my poems have appeared in journals, e-zines, and anthologies. My chapbook, Exactly Like Love, has been published by Osedax Press, and a second printing will be available before the end of the year.

Before

I’m 9 and behind the wheel of our green and white ’55 Olds.I start to check the mirrors,but my father tells me not to worry what’s coming from behind--though I know he always does.The Belt curves around to the right near the Bay Parkway exitand I see houses and parks and empty lots in the distanceand people walking on Shore Road, dressed for the weather.What’s missing is the Verrazano up ahead,that behemoth that looms over everything on land and on the seaand whose towers you can hardly ever see in the morning fog. It’s 1958, building it had not yet begun.Careful, Aloysius, he says to me, though he knows I’m scaredand more apt to wander from my lane unwittinglythan be foolhardy or reckless:I am my father’s son.This is a game I call Before— and as the bridge appears in the distance now— as it always does—maybe I can see it new,an approximation of the wonder that I’ve lost,that the years of easy living have worn away.Imagine seeing it now as if for the first and being stunned by its grace,its size, its utterness, the way it swallows upthe boats, the streets, the houses,fathers showing how to sail a boat, to skim a stone;kids on bikes, their fathers holding on and huffing from behind;fathers teaching their young how to driveand secretly pressing an imaginary braketo slow the car and the press of time;even a father’s memory of all that came before,and he never got a chance to tell. -first appeared in Melancholy-Hyperbole

The Lost Children

Then they’re grown and goneand though you’ve mostly lost track of their whereabouts— their faces no longer stuck to the fridge or names mentioned as preface to the 10 o’clock newsas requiring a place to be at this hour— you see them now in your dreams, lined up from herejust short of Kingdom Come, impossible to tell one from the next,— once so eager or innocent, distracted or scared,and now each with the same ironic smirk you’d like to wipe off their face with a fist or at least take an eraser to their insolent, cartoon stance,— arms crossed, one knee slightly hitchedand you’d swear almost ready to bend into your crotch, as you pass searching frantically for the one who once belonged to you, who,if the world were a smarter, saner place,would agree, it would be bestyou’d never recognize, even if you ran into each otheron the platform of the train, on line for the Philharmonic, or waiting out your time in the park alone, sipping another blessed cup of joe.

-appears in Exactly Like Love, published by Osedax Press

Motion is medicine, you tell me

and other times you say, Medicine is motion,and when I fail to apply the commutative propertyand switch it back around,you tell me I’m being difficultwhich I’m known to be when I don’t really give a shit,and forget the Prime Directive: In marriage, it’s best to go along to get along.

It also shows that day to day, Yeats was wrong:things don’t fall apart;they just get confused and eventually misshapentill you can’t figure which end is up,or what’s the subject of the sentence,or even which of the seven classic disciplines we ought to applythat would bring meaning to a challenging concept.This could explain Brexit, or the National Front in France—Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, my ass--or Pres. Trump’s one nation under God--Trust me, he says:we’ll have the very best One;or the existence of the God particle which sounds so promisingthat something—anything—might be holding us together.

I’ve learned reading Physics for Dummiesthat a body in motion tends to stay in motion,though I’ve noticed it’s plenty easythese days to tumble into an easy chair and fall fast asleepwith hardly a moment’s notice, even with all the bad newson loud and in a continuous loop.It was said Dali, himself, preferred to nap with a tin on his head.When it would fall and crash like cymbals on the hardwood floorhe would wake to the alarm, now rested,wax his moustache again, and get back to work.I guess, given current conditions,we’d be wise to forego our next nap,and get our asses back in gear.

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